Creative Writing Program
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
University of Houston Creative Writing Program 2016 Newsletter Inside Program News.........................4 Faculty News ...........................5 Student News ..........................7 Readings, Publications and Community ....................11 Alumni News .........................17 Steven G. Craig Interim Dean, CLASS Wyman Herendeen English Dept. Chair J. Kastely CWP Director Alex Parsons Interim CWP Director Giuseppe Taurino Assistant Director From the Director ourteen years ago, I agreed to be the interim director of Creative FWriting for one year. I have stayed in the position longer than I in- tended, and this, despite the fact that I have no interest in administration. What does interest me is the community of writers—both faculty and students—with whom I have had the privilege to work. This is a com- munity that I admire deeply. In contemporary America, it is not easy to pursue with integrity the life of a writer or to take seriously the study of literature. It has been rewarding to work with people who value that life and who pursue that study. I feel that they are people on whose behalf it is important to work. At times, my job has been to be a firewall and to protect the practices of writing and scholarly inquiry. Too often, they are endangered, not by direct opposition, but simply by the factitious cares that occupy so much of lives lived neces- sarily within bureaucracies. It may seem perverse but one of the gifts of a graduate education is to acquaint writers with the obstacles presented by a bureaucracy to the writing life. And an equally perverse gift of graduate education is providing the space for the writing life to fall apart and (hopefully) be reconstituted. One of my genuine pleasures has been to watch this process happen and to see how it promotes the development of original work. I have enjoyed working with all of you, and I am delighted that Alex Parsons will take over as Director—I cannot imagine a more capable, innovative, and generous writer to lead the Program. I look forward to watching the Program develop under his leadership. He will have a wonderful faculty and collection of students with whom to work, and he will be an excellent steward of the writing life. May you all continue to thrive as the fine writers that you are. As ever, j. 1 From the Interim Director… Kastely spent 14 years resolutely championing our program. He has been J. a leader cut from the same flowing cloth as, say, the Dalai Lama or Pope Francis, though he has a saltier vocabulary. I know of no greater praise than to say that j. is the rare man who could pull off wearing a toga and laurel wreath without it seeming an affectation. That he is a scholar of Plato, and The Repub- lic (ok, also The Prince), seems no accident. Now, however, j. dons the garb of the new English Department Chair. And it falls to someone to step in as Interim Director of the Creative Writing Program. Hence this note. I arrived at UH in 2007 and have felt profoundly fortunate to live and work among so many talented and collegial writers. (Except in the summer, when it’s hard to think beyond incipient heatstroke and appreciate anything but ice.) The signal achievement of the Program is not the many publications and awards garnered by the faculty and graduates. Nor is it the careers launched here. It is, rather, the very nature of this thriving collective of dedicated artists. Art is a collaborative endeavor, no matter the solitary hours in silent rooms. As we write we experience the gradual growth of a project, pruning and grafting and creating something fine.A similar iterative process applies when we construct communities. Our program has grown into a premier place to write and think in the company of other fine minds and generous souls by virtue of the effort and legacy of all who have passed through. This history is evident everywhere: in the curricula we offer; in the advice and counsel received and passed on in the classroom and outside of it; in the histories that inspire our donors’ sup- port; in the stories and poems we write. If literature is a great conversation, we have built a fine salon for it. Our guest list is distinguished, and the tenor of our discussions is lively, inquisitive, and constructive. In the coming year our concern is the brass tacks for the salon’s armchairs, ottomans, chaise longues, couches. We will focus on interrelated aspects of teaching and funding. First, we will increase our un- dergraduate enrollments. With more students in our introductory classes we can offer more sections for our MFA and Ph.D candidates to lead. Most of them, surprisingly, enjoy teaching to their passions, and are interested to develop those courses they’ll lead as professors. We will first launch a large, sopho- more-level, interdisciplinary course that explores poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. It will showcase various faculty who will visit to lecture, and allow students to work closely with our GAs. We hope to expand this model as more students crowd our subsequent courses. UH is heavily invested in the undergraduate experience and timely graduation rates. As we connect to this we will lobby for more GAships, faculty lines, and expanded funding. Second, we will refine the virtual CWP. That is, redesign the website and widely advertise the Program’s strengths: publications, job placements, awards, student-to-faculty ratio, competitive funding, etc. Third, we will push to create GAships that are unrelated to teaching and fund- ed from multiple sources, not just the CWP. This should broaden our institutional and local support, pull in students who aspire to write but not teach, and contribute via the work performed—grant-writing, for example, or web design and maintenance. I welcome your comments and suggestions and look forward to fostering the program as it has me and so many of my fellow writers. Yours in mourning for j., Alex Parsons 2 In Memory Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan (Ph.D., 2004) 1969 – 2016 “My Seedling, My Yonsei” For you, I will keep the ripe weight, plums, apricots, budding persimmons. The limes and climbing wisteria vines. Strawberries. Eggplants edging the house. Their slender, cylindrical bruises among cream, papery blossoms. For you, the powdery outline of monarchs, spread petals, seeds of lilies, orchids, gladiolas, bougainvillea, Birds of Paradise. For you, salamanders under the rocks, the hatch, slide, spin, glint of fish under a bridge. The lizards shedding their skin. Child, when seasons unwind and take turns, and sun filters a first glimpse of you- I will give you my life, each word, each breath, each cell, each wish. For you. -From Claire’s collection Shadow Mountains 3 Program News Ecopoetics copoetics on the Gulf (also known as The Shrimp Boat Projects) ran a third time this past spring, Eand the poetry workshop included collaborative work with senior Graphic Design students taught by Cheryl Beckett. The usual trips trawling, kayaking, birding, and marsh clearing were combined with multimedia exhibitions. First, the poets and designers created broadsides, which were sold as a fundraiser for Houston Audubon Society. Each group, led by a poet and assigned one of the four elements as a theme, created beautiful, hand-pressed broadsides. These works will soon be on display in the creative writing of- fice. The groups also produced cinepoems (videos), which were shown in two venues: a special Poetry and Prose Series event and at the Art School. Brazos Bookstore hosted a final reading by the poets from the broadsides now bound into a limited edition book. Next time around, the class will work on a marsh installation with graduate Architecture students while again writing, critiquing poems, and studying American shore odes. 4 Faculty News Robert Boswell published stories in Mississippi Review and the Ploughshares Solo Series. He also published an essay in The North American Review, and has a story forthcoming in The Atlantic. Audrey Colombe’s article, “An Undergradaute Novel Writing Courses” was published this past February in the AWP Writer’s Chronicle “Online Exclusives.” Chitra Divakaruni received the Premio Scanno award (also known as the Italian Nobel) in fall 2015 for her novel Oleander Girl. Her novel-in-stories, Before We Visit the Goddess, published in April 2016, received glowing national and internation- al reviews and became an international bestseller. She also received the Rhetorician of the Year award from the Young Rhetoricians Organization, and a play based on her book Arranged Marriage premiered in Toronto in summer 2016. Also, her youngest son graduated from college this past spring, so she is a happy mom! This past year, Nick Flynn published his ninth book, My Feelings (Graywolf Press), a collection of poems. He also judged the 2016 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, and had work featured in the an- thologies If Bees Are Few (University of Minnesota Press) and Why We Write About Ourselves (Plume), among others. The Fort Worth Opera performed the opera Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins, based on his play by the same name. In 2017, Nick will be performing at the Proud Archivist in London in collaboration with musician Sarah Lipstate (aka Noveller). Tony Hoagland’s most recent book of poems, Appli- cation for Release from the Dream, was published by Graywolf in September 2015. A collection of transla- tions from Celtic languages on which Tony collaborat- ed with Martin Shaw, a UK storyteller and folklorist, called Rough Gods is scheduled to be published in 2018. 5 Mat Johnson has teamed up with British show- as a trauma chaplain and to offer poetry and runner Sam Bain (Peep Show, Four Lions) to spiritual care workshops to chaplains and staff.